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White Trash Cooking (review)

White Trash Cooking (review) times gushy. Not all readers will share her fascination with birdcalls. Another complaint about the book is its poor editing and/or proofreading--e.g., "Found atop the commode lid, awaiting the first user, was found a sign in Tom's unmistakable hand" (pp. 225-226). Notwithstanding its lack of literary pretension, Cabin: A Mountain Adventure obviously has its appeal. As I was checking into Lexington's Bluegrass Airport, the airline employee at the counter wanted to take it into the back to show his pal, who is interested in cabins. Then when I reached home, I could hardly get the book away from my wife in order to finish reviewing it. --Harold Branam Mickler, Ernest Matthew. White Trash Cooking. High Point, North Carolina: The Jargon Society Press, 1986. Paperback, $10.95. Ernest Matthew Mickler has written a charming and witty cookbook, White Trash Cooking, and filled it with some splendid photographs. Mr. Mickler modestly makes no claims for his book other than that it accurately represents the cuisine of the Southern common man (and woman), but his enthusiastic readers will insist that it is much more. Perhaps the single most important datum on any people or culture is its food. Even more than sex, food is the subject of countless rules, prejudices and taboos. From Petronius' description of Roman dietary decadence to Levy-Strauss' polemic against table manners, if you want to know what folks are really like, watch them eat. Man is what he eats, according to a German sage. One wonders what the sage would have made of a collard-green sandwich. Some Northern friends have seemed bemused by my reaction to the book, and I think the reason for their bewilderment is the subtle way in which the book, purposely or not, points up the difference in class attitudes in the North and South. God sense of a shared heritage and a love of place that softens and makes benign these knows there are class distinctions in the South, but overriding any sense of class is a differences. What you do not have in the South is a class of upper-middle-class Yuppies up to their necks in Radical Chic, striving to separate themselves politicaUy, sartorially, morally and gastronomically from the despised "hard hats." The book could only have been written by a Southerner. One can hardly imagine a "Proletarian Cooking of the American Northeast" or "Favorite Recipes of the Working Classes of Pittsburgh." If some poor misguided Yankee should essay such a thing, you may be sure that he would add a soupçon of ideology of some kindfeminist, Marxist, supply side libertarian or what have you. For a Northern audience, such a book would have to make its readers feel superior to somebody. White Trash Cooking, on the other hand, sets a common table for all. A book review should find fault with something, but in this case it was hard. To see "perlow" speUed correctly, and to have "Cooter" as a chapter heading are things which would render me almost incapable of criticism. Two minor oversights, however, do come to mind. Why are there no recipes for gopher stew or "dattil" pepper sauce, those marvelous creations of Mr. Mickler's St. Augustine, Florida, But these are trifling complaints. Mr. Mickler has done a minor masterpiece for us --Walter M. Odum region? all. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Appalachian Review University of North Carolina Press

White Trash Cooking (review)

Odum, Walter M.
Appalachian Review , Volume 14 (4) – Jan 8, 1986
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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright © Berea College
ISSN
1940-5081
Publisher site
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Abstract

times gushy. Not all readers will share her fascination with birdcalls. Another complaint about the book is its poor editing and/or proofreading--e.g., "Found atop the commode lid, awaiting the first user, was found a sign in Tom's unmistakable hand" (pp. 225-226). Notwithstanding its lack of literary pretension, Cabin: A Mountain Adventure obviously has its appeal. As I was checking into Lexington's Bluegrass Airport, the airline employee at the counter wanted to take it into the back to show his pal, who is interested in cabins. Then when I reached home, I could hardly get the book away from my wife in order to finish reviewing it. --Harold Branam Mickler, Ernest Matthew. White Trash Cooking. High Point, North Carolina: The Jargon Society Press, 1986. Paperback, $10.95. Ernest Matthew Mickler has written a charming and witty cookbook, White Trash Cooking, and filled it with some splendid photographs. Mr. Mickler modestly makes no claims for his book other than that it accurately represents the cuisine of the Southern common man (and woman), but his enthusiastic readers will insist that it is much more. Perhaps the single most important datum on any people or culture is its food. Even more than sex, food is the subject of countless rules, prejudices and taboos. From Petronius' description of Roman dietary decadence to Levy-Strauss' polemic against table manners, if you want to know what folks are really like, watch them eat. Man is what he eats, according to a German sage. One wonders what the sage would have made of a collard-green sandwich. Some Northern friends have seemed bemused by my reaction to the book, and I think the reason for their bewilderment is the subtle way in which the book, purposely or not, points up the difference in class attitudes in the North and South. God sense of a shared heritage and a love of place that softens and makes benign these knows there are class distinctions in the South, but overriding any sense of class is a differences. What you do not have in the South is a class of upper-middle-class Yuppies up to their necks in Radical Chic, striving to separate themselves politicaUy, sartorially, morally and gastronomically from the despised "hard hats." The book could only have been written by a Southerner. One can hardly imagine a "Proletarian Cooking of the American Northeast" or "Favorite Recipes of the Working Classes of Pittsburgh." If some poor misguided Yankee should essay such a thing, you may be sure that he would add a soupçon of ideology of some kindfeminist, Marxist, supply side libertarian or what have you. For a Northern audience, such a book would have to make its readers feel superior to somebody. White Trash Cooking, on the other hand, sets a common table for all. A book review should find fault with something, but in this case it was hard. To see "perlow" speUed correctly, and to have "Cooter" as a chapter heading are things which would render me almost incapable of criticism. Two minor oversights, however, do come to mind. Why are there no recipes for gopher stew or "dattil" pepper sauce, those marvelous creations of Mr. Mickler's St. Augustine, Florida, But these are trifling complaints. Mr. Mickler has done a minor masterpiece for us --Walter M. Odum region? all.

Journal

Appalachian Review – University of North Carolina Press

Published: Jan 8, 1986

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